Contested Sacredness: the Meanings and Uses of Space in the Former Information Service of Rosario City as a Site of Memory

Abstract

The article analyzes the contested sacredness surrounding the former Santa Fe Police Information Service (SI), a former clandestine detention center from the last Argentine dictatorship in Rosario, which has been restored as a place of memory since 2001. Considering the distinction between the sacred and the profane as relational and situated categories, the article examines the ways in which these notions are constructed and contested in practice through different uses of space. Based on ethnographic fieldwork—conducted between 2016 and 2020 through interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis—three key scenes are reconstructed: the initial tensions during the site's recovery process in the early 2000s; the disagreements within human rights organizations in 2007; and the controversies that arose in 2015 following architectural interventions promoted by the provincial government. The analysis shows that the sacredness of the former SI is not an intrinsic property of the place, but rather the result of political and memorial work of significance that positions it—exclusively or complementarily—as a place of death or a place of life according to the actors involved and the specific contexts in which it occurs.